Having simplified all of its major moviemaking decisions down to a modified magnetic poetry kit, Warner Bros. is still moving forward on its dark fairy-tale reimagining of Pinocchio in the vein of Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland, a film whose billion-dollar box office it hopes to emulate by, as previously reported, hiring Tim Burton to just sort of do that again. That path of least resistance continues with the announcement that both the studio and the director are now courting Robert Downey Jr. to star as Geppetto—Robert Downey Jr. being one of the two or three actors who is always being courted for these sorts of things, and even Tim Burton being well aware that everyone just thinks he’s going to stick Johnny Depp in this, because they’re so funny.

Anyway, so far neither director nor actor has done anything besides express interest in the Bryan Fuller-scripted film, although since the project first began making the rounds in 2010, it’s been joined by two other proposed Pinocchio updates from Guillermo del Toro and Shawn Levy, not to mention enough “Burton-inspired dark fairy-tale reimaginings” for that to become a dubious genre unto itself. By actually landing both Burton and Downey, however, Warner Bros. may not even have to make Pinocchio, allowing audiences to instead just make logical assumptions as what that would look like, beating all competitors to the punch and saving tons on productions costs.